The reference to any prior art in this specification is not, and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that the prior art forms part of the common general knowledge.
When comparing air-travel options online, customers seeking to purchase flight tickets are often faced with two choices. The first option is for the customer to browse the Internet to each of the airline's sites individually and later follow-up on the best option. The second option is to use a comparison service that lists the fares and schedules of several airlines in one location.
The first of these methods takes longer and requires the user to keep their own tally of options in order to determine and then follow-up on the best candidate.
For the second option, the comparison-table option typically presents a grid of fares, with departure times for individual flights on one axis, and flight providers and fare types on another axis. An example of a known comparison-table webpage available at www.webjet.com.au is shown in FIG. 1. Fare values are shown on the chart at the corresponding flight class and time coordinates. On popular city-to-city routes, even with only two or three airlines conducting services, these comparison-tables can be very large. The number of rows in the table is dictated by the number of individual flights (e.g. 50 rows for a typical mid-week Brisbane to Sydney table showing fares for the three main airlines that fly that route). Airlines also often offer multiple flight classes (economy, premium economy, business, first class etc). In turn, each flight class can be divided into multiple fare types (e.g. Supersaver, SupersaverPlus, etc.) for that class which can further add to the complexity of comparison tables through the introduction of additional columns or rows for each fare class or type. The table typically displays hundreds of cells containing prices and the size of the table often means that they can't be displayed in full on one screen or page. Scrolling through the tables on-screen can leave the user lost in a grid of fares where the column and row labels can no longer be seen. As air traffic increases, and more airlines fly each route offering an increased number of fare options, the tables will become larger and more difficult to read. Their effectiveness as a comparison tool will further diminish.